The instructions this past Thursday at Irving Plaza were simple: Smile, you’re on tour. Ensuring the sold-out room followed orders, Jordan Lutes — the man behind the moniker Jutes — stood front and center, dressed in tailored trousers, a crisp white button-up complemented by a tie, a trench coat, and black-out sunglasses. The look left no question suspended in the air: This was our leader, our priest, our prophet for the ambitious 21-song sermon waiting ahead.

New York City was first greeted by two equally enchanting opening acts. The first to grace the cherished Irving Plaza stage was wilt, whom I had the pleasure of being enthralled by once before late last year. Wandering into the venue from the fluorescent haze of law school admissions test prep, I arrived just as wilt was wrapping up, but I was still able to clutch onto the final two songs and scan the room long enough to see the audience holding onto those last few moments just as tightly. I am not all too familiar with their music, but hearing them live again, even for only a brief stretch, reminded me of the disservice I had been doing to myself. Their fusion of ’90s grunge, assailing alternative rock, and a shoegaze haze, all carried by a powerhouse female vocalist, is not something easily shaken from memory. I cannot wait to catch their full set again in the future, and if you’re searching for something singular in the rock space, wilt is more than deserving of a permanent place in your rotation.

As the lights dissolved once more, In Color stepped forward to set the next scene, casting a spell over Irving Plaza that felt impossible to sidestep. I had been itching to see the quartet live since stumbling upon their music across social media discover pages, and they fit the bill as though it had been drawn around them. Bred in Nashville, Tennessee, they sound nothing like you might expect to emerge from the Mid-South of Tennessee; the music is polished without ever abandoning its emotionally oversized rock tendencies, settling somewhere between indie rock and alternative pop. It is accessible enough to slip into popular playlists, yet driving enough to be savored by listeners lingering along the grittier edges of rock. I entered the room with high expectations after watching their live clips online, but they managed to stretch far beyond anything I had pictured. Above all, they were the perfect direct support act to open the door into the sonic universe Jutes inhabits.

And then the air shifted. Anticipation became tangible, and the fans pressed tightly against the barricade welcomed Jutes with a wall of screams before darkness had even swallowed the room, signaling that the real ceremony was about to begin. Fresh off the release of his latest record, Chin Up, Beautiful, Jutes entered New York City with a setlist largely built from songs barely 20 days old, yet their newness did nothing to quiet the reception. If anything, it proved how quickly his music has burrowed beneath listeners’ skin. Granted, Jutes is far from new to the craft — his solo career stretches back more than a decade — but as he often reflects mid-show, 2024 became the year everything tilted onto a different axis. The release of “Sleepyhead” sent his career down a trajectory he had almost stopped believing was possible, and listeners have clung to every croon and each new offering ever since.

For anyone reaching for genre labels, Jutes remains nearly impossible to pin down, and that refusal to sit politely in one space is exactly what makes his sound so magnetic. Every influence he reaches for personally seems to bleed into the next, creating something that leaves fingerprints across multiple scenes without becoming beholden to any of them. There are songs heavy enough to sink their teeth into metal enthusiasts, yet soft enough at times to satisfy indie rock and alternative-pop cravings; in the same breath, another passage slips into a flow more adjacent to trap, hip-hop, or R&B. Broadly, it is rock, but hidden beneath its many layers in an emotional current capable of gathering people you might enver expect to see sharing the same room. At the core of everything, this is music for yearners — lyricism that reads like poetry but refuses to disguise its bruises.

“Sleepyhead” may have first revealed the full breadth of that diversity, feeling at the time like one of the most self-assured assertions in his discography, but Chin Up, Beautiful allows the fusion to finally become flesh. After years spent earning songwriting credit for an array of artists, Jutes seems to have poured every corner of that experience into a project that feels like the clearest portrait of himself yet. For me, it has quickly climbed into the ranks of my all-time favorite albums; across 13 songs, there is something to satisfy every craving, whether you reach for rock, hardcore, melody, or a more syncopated groove.

The early singles immediately caught my attention, but the album begs to be consumed in full, and Jutes emphasized that intention in New York City; in a world increasingly built around standalone singles and viral fragments, he wanted to create an album. Its opening stretch declares that mission exquisitely, each track folding into the next until they form a larger narrative of love, loss, and understanding. My one contention with the live performance was that we did not get to hear that strategic placement reverberate through Irving Plaza exactly as it does on the record, but even then, the set was carefully arranged to keep the room hooked, and Jutes held everyone comfortably in the palm of his hand.

Jutes came out rumbling with “Cry Wolf,” and 20 days were apparently more than enough for New York City to memorize every lyric. Voices collided with his so loudly that he nearly disappeared beneath the chorus, but as a songwriter who has occupied enough important studios, Jutes understands the weight of production, and that mastery seeped through every crack of the pristine engineering. From there, he wasted no time setting the tone, cheekily throwing “Who’s a slut?” toward the room before “SMUT” intoxicated the sold-out hall. We were dragged through the heavier roots he grew from on tracks such as “Mannequin” and “Blink Twice” before the atmosphere loosened with “Goodnight (Interlude),” another moment from the latest record that cemented his ability to shape-shift. It is groovy, steeped in R&B and seduction, and onstage Jutes let his body soften into that current, moving with the song instead of simply delivering it — and the crowd reflected that movement back.

Of course, the songs that carried him into the sold-out rooms he commands today were met with feverish recognition: “Obsessed,” “Limerence,” “Sleepyhead,” and even an enchanting acoustic rendition of “Vertigo” that attested to the strength of Jutes’ songwriting by transforming a thrashing rock pleaser into a delicate, crooning lullaby. What stood out most to me was the addition of a full live band, with a drummer, guitarist, and bassist giving the music the physical weight its studio recordings have always begged for. It was my first time witnessing Jutes live, so I cannot speak on previous performances, but as a solo artist, he could easily cut corners instrumentally — something I see far too often. Instead, the decision made his care for the audience’s experience impossible to overlook. Each musician was formidable in their own right, and together they gave the songs more teeth, dimension, and pulse.

The audience experience was never treated like an afterthought, either. “Smile For The Camera” received an iconic introduction as Jutes told us we looked so pretty, pulled out his phone for a photograph, and struck the opening line while the entire room held its pose. He also gifted New York City — along with several other stops on this run — an unreleased song titled “Love Psychosis,” teasing the possibility of a deluxe edition of Chin Up, Beautiful and leaving us impatiently awaiting the chance to play it on repeat. Yet the charismatic, lighthearted moments were balanced by flashes of introspective candor that offered listeners a piece of his heart, and the one that stayed with me most arrived in the breaths before “Take Care Of Her,” one of the record’s only true slow burns. Written for Jutes’ grandfather following the loss of his grandmother earlier this year, the explanation that “[this song is] about my grandpa watching his best friend die” cut directly through the room. When an artist moves this heavily across so many tracks, I always search for the acoustic confession, that small wink of something unexpected, and while “Take Care Of Her” had always become special to me in its studio form, hearing it live left me spellbound. In the final moments, a sea of hand hearts rose into the open air, turning private grief into something communal and making the connecting power of music briefly, beautifully tangible.

A two-song encore cradled us through the closing moments, and once again, the intention behind the arrangement became impossible to overlook. “Chin Up, Beautiful” and “Sleepyhead” became the evening’s final bookends: one taste of the present, then a reminder of how we arrived here, gathered in a sold-out Manhattan room on a Thursday night. After witnessing so many performances throughout the last year alone, there are few artists I genuinely count down the days to see, but Jutes remained one of the final names on my must-see list, and I made no mistake sprinting for tickets the moment the date was announced. He may no longer qualify as a best-kept secret — the sold-out rooms speak for themselves — but in 2026, it still feels like catching him at the threshold, just before the venues grow larger and the secret becomes impossible for the rest of the world to ignore.